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Conservatives will bear the blame for government shutdown

According to this CNN poll conducted over the weekend, 46% say they would blame congressional Republicans for a government shutdown, with 36% saying the president would be more responsible and 13% pointing fingers at both the GOP in Congress and Obama. That 36% who blame the President is bolstered by about 20% of the nation who would blame him for anything. We’re going to get to test this data, because we’re heading for a government shut down in a few hours and nothing seems to able to stop it.

At issue is healthcare for millions of people, something conservatives have always been against. Whether it was Medicare or CHIP or Obamacare, they hate the idea of poor and middle-class people seeing doctors and being treated. It’s bizarre but that’s the ground they’ve staked out:

NYT — This time, it wasn’t just a few Tea Party hotheads who drove the United States government to the brink of shutting down. Early Sunday morning, all 231 House Republicans (along with 17 Democrats) decided that crippling health care reform was more important than keeping the government’s doors open. It was one of the most irresponsible votes since the last shutdown in 1996.

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Harold Rogers of Kentucky — a 32-year veteran who should know better — stood on the House floor and disingenuously claimed that the Republicans were not trying to provoke a shutdown. He called their amendments to the temporary spending resolution, which would put the health reform law on hold for a year and repeal a tax on medical devices, “a peaceable offer” to the Senate, a helpful compromise.

In fact, they know that these outrageous conditions for keeping the government open stand no chance in the Senate when it reconvenes on Monday just hours before government funding runs out at midnight.

This law was based on a conservative approach to healthcare, it was debated, then passed by the House and Senate, signed by the WH, and finally upheld by the Supreme Court. Two general elections were fought over it, in the last one in 2012, conservatives and their nominee, Mitt Romney, hardly talked about anything else — they sure didn’t want to discuss terrorism much after OBL was hit. Conservatives lost, healthcare won.

If the faction in one-half of one branch government gets their way by threatening to destroy the nation, there will be no way to pass laws anymore. And that will work against all laws, no matter who holds the WH or what party is passing what.

Comments

Exactly! This is a comment that I found in another conversation and saved because it speaks the truth to me:

“While I personally like the Affordable Care Act, it no longer matters because the ACA is no longer the issue.

If a small minority – any minority of any description – is allowed to nullify a law it doesn’t like by threatening to shut down the whole government, or force a default on the nation’s debts, then the US Constitution is finished. If President Obama gives in on this, then the right wingers will soon be demanding their way on everything – probably including extra tax breaks for the Koch brothers – as the cost of keeping the government open and its debts paid. At that point, the Constitution no longer has any applicability or function.

Basically, the teabaggers have said, in effect, “we’ve played four quarters of football and lost by two touchdowns, so let’s go into overtime, We”ll take the ball on your ten-yard line, but if you really want to compromise, we might agree to the twenty.”

Will this actually matter in the next election, or will gerrymandering, voter restrictions and party loyalty prevent this dissatisfaction with congressional republicans from translating to actual change at the polls?

And supposing the Senate and the President caved in and gave them what they want: they would get only a 45 day continuing resolution, guaranteeing a second round of ransom demands in November. Play along and they’ll release that hostage, one finger at a time.

Exactly Reg. I was tlaking to a gleeful conservative over the weekend, when I pointed out that even in theory, there’s no way we’d postpone this deal for a few weeks of fiscal peace that would benefit wealthy investor-class conservatives over working-class progressives anyway. That to even consider such a major concession we’d extract painful counter concessions of such magnitude the GOP would never be able to even bring them up for a vote. It harshed his delusion buzz.

Fox, there’s are about 201 dems and 234 repubs in the House right now, more or less, rounding out on some indies and mods. There are roughly 40 to 50 so-called competitive districts even after the 2010 gerrymander, by safe we usually mean within five to 10 points. So dems would have to hold the ones they have and win near half, about 17 if my math is right, of those to retake the House. Those are long odds, but not impossible. Just having a net gain in the House in 2014 is historically an uphill battle, but it’s a more realistic one and would send a powerful message to the congress.

And the advantage the Dems had has steadily declined over the last few months. One’d think that the GOP will hit rock bottom with this shutdown and the debt ceiling fiasco.

Then, they’ll have about eight to ten months to recover from the beating. More than enough time given how incompetent these Democrats are. Further, should there be any missteps in the implementation of Obamacare, the rightwing propaganda machine will be in full swing, the expected tepid response from Obama and the Dems missing (yes, even a tepid response would cut it, but it’ll be missing) and you’ll even have a few more on the side of those 17 Democrats